[jmarshall]

I think purely from a development point of view that it requires a LOT of code.

From a development point of view, we could allow "variable" colours/positions/other numeric values on skin load (window load) ONLY reasonably easily.

Having them update without a window load would require a lot of code to be added.

I also don't like the syntax, but that's not a major issue.

Cheers,
Jonathan

[BritneysPAIRS]

I patched the svn myself to do a cheap thing like this. It was just a vistag of is the clock am or pm and a tag for for is the date >2004 these work on real time. Some conditions would give you a little control to change stuff real time. eg vistag for night 6pm-6am and a and !vistag would be day

[jmarshall]

The vis tag does NOT apply to colors individually though - only to controls. Let's not get the two confused.

[BritneysPAIRS]

I know its just a cheap solution for changing images or lables on time

[Gamester17]

how complete does a skin need to be to be put onto the svn, I am working on it about every other day, but if someone wanted to help finish it up, it might go quicker, really only the small stuff needs to be replaced, I say replaced, because all it is really just a MAJOR PM3 mod, none of PM3s screens are there and none of it's graphics will be used in the end, but all credit to the whole of its code goes to the PM3 that I replace and altered.

@MacGyver, go right ahead and put any (and all) of skins 'as is' into the XBMC Skinning Project SVN. See spiff comment, the SVN is just to ease development and make collaboration between many developers simpler. It is also good to have the full skin source in the SVN in case a developer abandons a skin then others can continue their work.

The only requirements we have for stuff you put into the SVN is that eveything is open source and that no copyrights or licenses are violated.

[Gamester17]

From a development point of view, we could allow "variable" colours/positions/other numeric values on skin load (window load) ONLY reasonably easily.

Having them update without a window load would require a lot of code to be added.

That will be allright for most people, ...but you may have heard the saying "enough is never enough", and my guess is that once a skin for this is out there in the wild then it will not be long before skinners and users alike will request for those variables to be able to change/fade in real-time without a window load (in the same window, when idle)

[Jezz_X]

@MacGyver, go right ahead and put any (and all) of skins 'as is' into the XBMC Skinning Project SVN. See spiff comment, the SVN is just to ease development and make collaboration between many developers simpler. It is also good to have the full skin source in the SVN in case a developer abandons a skin then others can continue their work.

The only requirements we have for stuff you put into the SVN is that eveything is open source and that no copyrights or licenses are violated.

I would like to add to this that at a preference we also don't really want people uploading 70mb of uncompressed bitmap images loaded up just for one skin ( Xepher I'm looking at you ) So if you have lots of images the prefered format is lossless .png files

[MacGyver]

I was just trying to think of a way to be able to add time/date color themes to new and existing skins, with only changing the color theme xmls. I know know it might be easier to simply add a vis condition, but then every skin would have to be twice the size or more in places that supported color changes.

Like I said before, I'm not a programmer, so I know nothing of the trouble it would be to impliment those changes. I was thinking of the ease of implimentation to the skinners, not that of the developers

[MacGyver]

It's been so long since I looked at the Kaleidascape skin, it may not even be 2.0 compatible I use opensvn right now, I can never figure out the url of the sf svn to upload to, and can I upload just the skin named folder, or will I have to create the folder in sf, and upload the skins sub folders into it then?

[jmarshall]

If you check out the trunk (all skins) then you can just add directly from there.

Otherwise, create the folder (eg using the repository browser) and check that out. Copy the subfolders into it and check them all in.

Getting back on track though:

For colors alone something more general is doable - essentially all colours will become a "lookup" into the colors .xml on a dynamic basis, instead of being looked up on skin load only, but I just wanted to point out that it's non-trivial in a general sense (positioning of controls for instance would be very tricky to have this ability, though with animations that is somewhat taken care of already). The format would be similar to the conditional formats we already have:

<color name="fontcolor" condition="blah">ff323959</color>
<color name="fontcolor" condition="blah2">ff323960</color>
<color name="fontcolor" condition="blah3">ff323961</color>
<color name="fontcolor" condition="blah4">ff323962</color>

with the first satisfied condition taking precedence.

Cheers,
Jonathan

[MacGyver]

jmarshall, I just tried the new build, and the <ondown> works, just not in content lists, I tried

<item>
<label>5</label>
<label2>none</label2>
<icon>bmx-settings.png</icon>
<thumb>bmx-settings-glow.png</thumb>
<onclick>ActivateWindow(settings)</onclick>
<ondown>ActivateWindow(settings)</ondown>
</item>

but it doesn't work, it does work in the <control> just not from the content list.
i did try it without the <onclick> too, but nothing.

the fading in list works great though.

[jmarshall]

Use <onclick>Select</onclick> in the control.

There's more than one way to skin a cat

[Gamester17]

It's been so long since I looked at the Kaleidascape skin, it may not even be 2.0 compatible I use opensvn right now, I can never figure out the url of the sf svn to upload to, and can I upload just the skin named folder, or will I have to create the folder in sf, and upload the skins sub folders into it then?

off-topic but I do hope that you will upload that skin to the XBMC Skinning Project's SVN so that the skin does not die like many other skins has when they have not been in an SVN.

[MacGyver]

Gamester, other than the interface looking the same as a $30,000 media center, alot of it's unique views that I had created are in other skins now, xTV's list view, a few others use a tightly packed icon view, and PM3's expanded information list view.

There are still some features of KS that work work right in XBMC (the fixed focus tight icon view).

The only real reason for using it, would be the novelty of having your $70 Xbox working better then a $30,000 PVR (XBMC is still the best in the world IMHO).

If you think it's worth it, I'll put it up there, but it won't seem too impressive unless you look at the fact that all it's view modes didn't exist anywhere else a year ago when I made it.

If I do continue working on it, I'd like to expand KS's weak 3 views into something new, a skin that has EVERY possible way of viewing it's media (and the original KS views). What do you think Gamester?

[Gamester17]

If I do continue working on it, I'd like to expand KS's weak 3 views into something new, a skin that has EVERY possible way of viewing it's media (and the original KS views). What do you think Gamester?

Please go right ahead, I have always thought that a clone/replica skin does not just have to be an exact copy, but rather a tribute for which improvements more than welcomed (make it into what you think the original should have looked like). I think that with the option to use custom background images the Kaleidascape skin will look awsome in XBMC.